


The Grandparents of the Revolution

by TheCatDemonofInk



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Multi, Other, Spirits, faerie - Freeform, nonbinary characters!, there are distinctly few cis characters here whoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 22:47:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21465769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCatDemonofInk/pseuds/TheCatDemonofInk
Summary: A long time ago, around a century ago actually, the neighbour and childhood friend of one Vic, who happened to be named Chrisl, would happen to fall in love with Vic's university classmate, Adri. Chrisl, of course, would then proceed to bug their best friend to introduce them.Of course, it would happen during a revolution in the Cloudian world.Now, in the present day, there's another revolution going on, and guess what?Grandchildren.
Relationships: Adri/Chrisl, Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), nblnb - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 1





	The Grandparents of the Revolution

“Cyne-sikhe.“ The spirit says, voice dripping with irritation and spite, even as he spits out the words. Adri makes xirself comfortable and continues listening and nodding to the accusations that got old a century ago.

“Vic, when Chrisl comes in, give them the muffin I made in the corner please. The blue one is for Chrisl. The green one is for Soren-sikhe.”

“ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME.” The spirit yells. Adri turns back, still smiling calmly.

“Of course, I am.” Adri says, letting a breeze flow out from xir fingertips to fluff out xir hair. The complaints are as they were a century ago about the fact that Adri and Vic are safely holed up during all the fighting of the revolution and are nice and comfortable and aren’t contributing anything. Oh, and the normal complaint that Vic has no right because ey does written magic. A century ago, the disdain and irritation affected Adri a lot more, and made xir question if there had been any merit in the complaints.

The answer, both back then and now, was and is ‘no’. Adri’s voice starts quiet, and remains calm even as xe increases the volume.

“Let me ask you something that you might not have considered. So, you go fighting the whole day and you get injured. Injuries and battle scars that you are proud of if your attitude is any indicator. So where do you come back to? If you stay out in the field, you have no food, no shelter, no rest, and you’re going to burn out. You might get captured and you fear constantly for your safety. You hurt. Your injuries get infected. You’re hungry. You can’t think straight. And you think you can continue fighting for long enough to get through a revolution?

So, don’t talk about uselessness unless you’ve bothered studying your history.”

Adri let xir words hang in the air for a while before turning, and resuming the appearance of a cheerful, reasonable, friendly old faerie. Vic whooped quietly in the background and there was the faint sound of applause from a corner.

“Cyne-sikhe?” A soft voice called from behind. Adri turned to see Soren looking embarrassed and a little surprised.

“Soren-sikhe! I didn’t expect you until later. Sit down, sit down… I don’t think Chrisl is here yet.” Adri says, gesturing at the sofa that Chrisl and Soren normally sit at when discussing Soren’s Magistae preparations. “What have I said about calling me Adri-sikhe, child?”

“Sorry, Adri-sikhe. I wanted to ask about whether Fae and Castore can come here later to do their homework in the back room? It’s just Iridesca and Aurum have something on and won’t be coming home and I don’t trust those two alone in the cabin.”

Vic wheels back in, carrying a tray of muffins. “You know y’all are always welcome here. Of course, they can come over and use the back room.”

“Thank you, Ygwitz-sikhe, Cyne-sikhe.” Soren says, bowing a little at both of them.

“Vic-sikhe.”

“Adri-sikhe.”

Adri and Vic say together, making Soren blush a little.

(One of the reasons for the sofa being in the corner is that it’s directly within Adri and Vic’s line of sight when either of them is behind the counter. So, when someone tries to bother Soren about being starborn and not faerie or spirit, either of them can come over and deal with the problem. At one point, someone tried to come after Soren’s younger sister Castore when she came and Vic lost eir temper and activated eir wards. This resulted in a most unfortunate expulsion from the shop. Castore and Soren apologised profusely for the trouble, only for Adri to shrug and tell both of them that it was no trouble.)

\--

Once Soren is comfortably seated on the sofa and beginning to eat the muffin, Vic takes advantage of a lull to glide emself over to Soren’s table, and rest eir elbows on the table. “How are the twins doing? I haven’t heard about them in a while.”

Soren swallows their mouthful of muffin and shrugs. “Des is engaged in another argument with the university. She’s insisting that she should be allowed to sit in the Politics lectures and to study Law. (Quite right she should be insisting! Vic mutters) Aurum is still with the demons trying to do something about body chemistry. Or some kind of chemistry. I’m not sure. (Good for her! If she wants help or needs warding help, she can come ask me.)”

“Well, they both certainly seem to be enjoying their time in university. Which is exactly what they should be doing.” Vic states, crossing eir arms and nodding firmly.

Soren laughs a little. “Well, after the fuss they both made about being allowed in to the university, their warding skills are certainly getting a lot better.”

Vic’s face darkens, even as ey lean back lazily. “Tell them both to come over. I’ll do some of their wards so the strain on their magic lessens.”

Vic mutters something under eir breath about them being ‘children!’ and ‘dishonourable’ and ‘shouldn’t have to fight for their safety what RIGHT’, before wheeling off.

Vic and Adri have considered it for a long time and been offering the use of the safe rooms on one of the levels of the shop to Soren and their siblings, except that Soren would never accept it. Soren, Fae and Castore stay in a small cabin (with the strongest wards that Vic could come up with, and that Soren would accept). The twins both stay on campus, but come off whenever they can to help take care of Fae and Castore (who both insist that they’re old enough to not need to be taken care of. Vic, Adri and Chrisl all laughed at that.)

Soren refuses what they consider charity, and what Adri and Vic consider basic decency. But then, Vic understands to some degree. Soren and their siblings don’t want to be pitied, even if it doesn’t come from a place of pity. It’s all Vic, Adri and Chrisl can do to convince them to let Vic do some warding on their place and encourage Soren to use Lightnink when they need a safe place to go to.

It still angers Vic. So many years down the road and Vic is still struck constantly by the unfairness. It feels like every time they try to improve things for everyone, there’s always someone who wants to restrict who gets access to those improvements. Soren and their siblings are innocents. Soren and their siblings are children. There are beings who want to leave beings like Soren and their siblings out and it infuriates Vic on a very visceral level.

Because Vic sees emself back in the first revolution again. Vic sees everyone who told em that ey was unworthy of anything the revolution was fighting because Vic couldn’t do magic (that counted in their eyes) and could only ward and use writing magic.

The twins are barely twenty. Fae turned fifteen a few days ago. Castore was thirteen. Soren had to parent all of them, despite being twenty-seven themself.

“Chrisl!” Adri calls from behind the counter as they walk in. Vic brews a fresh cup of coffee (a sprig of silvertongue and winter leaves added for flavouring, just how Chrisl prefers it). Chrisl pecks Adri’s cheek and drops a book into Vic’s lap, before going over to sit with Soren.

“Did you change the wards again?” Chrisl asks, when Vic comes over with the muffins and coffee. “I thought they were blue yesterday.”

Vic grins. The wards were indeed changed, and that made the floor glow silver and green instead of the blue swirls of yesterday. Most of the customers who came to the shop weren’t sensitive enough to notice the difference in wards immediately but there were some benefits to being close friends to someone for upwards of a century.

“Yeah, I did. Altered the basing to draw a bit more energy on Adri’s wind chimes, and did some more fancy balancing. Do you like it?”

“Vic. In the entire time you have known me, have I ever said no?” Chrisl says, sipping their coffee. Vic pats them on the back and leaves Chrisl and Soren to start discussing.

Adri has started another batch of bread by the time Vic gets back, and is humming under xir breath. The bread, as with everything else Adri makes, smells wonderful, a mix of warmth, comfort and home wafting around the kitchen. Back when Adri was just eir classmate and not eir partner and roommate, xe used to bake and cook all the time and bring food to class to share with everyone.

(Vic has yet to be convinced that Adri doesn’t have some sort of food-related magic, despite knowing that Adri has wind and weather magic.)

“If I go up to the backroom to make space for Fae and Castore, can you manage the front?” Vic asks, already pulling at the strands to open up the space in the back.

“Sure. Will call you if I need further help, but there aren’t too many around today.”

Vic yells eir thanks and then speeds up into the backroom.

‘Backroom’ is technically a little misleading. There is a room that is in the back, behind the counters and the kitchens, but when Vic and Adri say backroom, they usually mean the maze of constructed space that Vic made when constructing the shop. There are several levels to what is theoretically the backroom, and only Vic, Adri and Chrisl really know how to navigate it. Vic and Adri share living space on the second floor of the ‘backroom’ but no one outside the three of them really know how extensive the created space is.

As far as anyone else knows, the backroom is a simple room. It’s just that that room happens to be the entrance to the rest of the ‘backroom’.

Vic opens up one of the rooms on what ey reckons is between the third and fourth floor. Close enough for Vic and Adri to keep an eye on Fae and Castore, but far enough away from the rest of the world that Fae and Castore are safe and have a decent amount of privacy.

(There is a reason why none of them will explain to anyone how the backroom works. It’s a safety measure, born of the Floodlight Revolution, where there were spirits who pretended to be revolutionaries and then infiltrated some of the other safehouses to blow them up. Vic’s warding is good enough that it won’t work here, but it’s safer if no one knows how to navigate it without help from one of them. All three of them only know how to navigate it because they all contributed to building it.)

Before ey know it, Adri is calling em back and saying that Fae and Castore are here.

\--

“Good. Have you finished writing everything down?” Chrisl says, watching as Soren scribbles their last thoughts onto a stack of water-stained paper. Fae and Castore said hi as they went in, before proceeding to follow Vic up into the backroom.

After Soren nods, Chrisl closes their notebook and takes in Soren’s appearance. The dark bags under Soren’s eyes stand out and the lines of their body suggests fatigue and stress. Their lab coat is crumpled and their eyes are reddened at the edges. They’re slouching into the sofa, and their fingers have-

“Soren, what happened to your hands?”

Soren’s eyes dart away, a very Diristerian move. Sometimes, Soren’s body language reveals the fact that despite the years they’ve spent in Cloud, they never will lose the fact that Soren was born and raised on Dirister for fifteen years. “Nothing.”

“Soren.” Chrisl’s voice has a warning tone, and they open their hands and lay them out on the table.

Soren sighs and lays their hands on Chrisl’s. “It’s really nothing. It’s just normal. They don’t like that I’m starborn and studying immunology of beings that aren’t spirits. So, they. They do things.”

Chrisl raises an eyebrow even as they send a surge of healing magic flowing through Soren’s hands. The tender, recently burned skin and the cuts in their fingers tell Chrisl a different story.

Soren sighs with relief as the cuts close and the burns disappear. “Thank you, Chrisl-sikhe.”

“Good. Now, do you want to tell me more about what’s been happening?” Chrisl asks.

Soren throws up their hands. “Ok you know what? I might as well tell you- Can we go to the backroom?”

“Sure.” Chrisl stands up, and helps Soren into the backroom, and gets them to one of the ones on the third floor that Chrisl normally uses when they have to rest. Now that Soren’s standing and walking, it’s obvious that they’re trying to hide a limp as well.

“I’m going to check you over.” Chrisl says when they reach, seating Soren down on the bed.

Soren says “okay” very quietly, and lies back.

Chrisl’s made it halfway down Soren’s body, healing all the injuries that they can, when Soren finally starts to speak.

“I’m just scared, you know? It’s been getting worse for us, me, Des, Aurum, ‘Tore, Fae. Someone tried to kill Des yesterday, did you know? I didn’t know. Not until Aurum came running into the lab at full speed, carrying her. They nearly succeeded too. And Fae too. They tried to bar Fae from one of her normal classes. Fae had to fight her way through, and there was this huge cut on her leg later. Even Castore. God, Castore’s so small, you know? I found her carving wards into her things earlier, because someone stole and threw one of her books away. And the things they say. They. Like. Look, I’m okay if it’s just me. I don’t care. I mean yeah it hurts and it’s bloody irritating when they use stupid technicalities to say I can’t do things but I’m okay with that and I can find loopholes on my own to do what I want to do. I’m used to it even. But the rest of them? They don’t remotely deserve any of it. They’re just. They’re just kids.”

Soren pauses to take a breath and then exhales slowly. Chrisl sits next to them for a moment and when it appears that Soren isn’t going to continue, they extend their arms.

“Would you like a hug, Soren?”

Soren sits there for a few more moments, and then curls up in Chrisl’s arms. As Chrisl pats their back, Soren begins to cry a little, their voice breaking. “I’m so scared, Chrisl-sikhe. I’m so scared about everything. And I don’t want to disappoint any of them. Or you. And I’m scared, all the time, that I’m just. That I’m not good enough. That I’m not living up to whatever you saw when you took me on as a Magistae candidate. That I’m failing my siblings. That I can’t keep them safe-“

“It’s okay to cry, Soren. It’s okay to be upset.”

Chrisl thinks that they were doing a great job of pretending to be calm and comforting, considering that they would rather like to kill a good number of people. If they could, they would like to change the world so that beings like Soren never had to deal with this kind of utter bullshit.

Which was what they supposed revolutions were for. But the wheels weren’t turning fast enough and Soren and their siblings were still getting hurt. Beings were still trying to exclude starborn from the revolution. Chrisl couldn’t even say they were surprised by this, because the last time it had happened, it had been Vic on the other end, and Adri and Chrisl yelling.

For now, all Chrisl does is hold Soren as they cry, and cry themself to exhaustion and finally fall asleep.

\--

“Can we do something about the whole Soren situation?” Chrisl asks that night after the shop has closed. Soren, Fae and Castore are staying the night because Soren was so tired and Chrisl and Vic both refused to let them stress about taking care of Fae and Castore. Vic had already sent a message to both Iridesca and Aurum to tell them where the rest of their siblings were.

“Can we ask if Fae and Castore are okay moving in here? Because I mean, we have the space. And if Fae and Castore agrees, it will be a lot easier to convince Soren.” Adri says, leaning back against xir bed from the floor. Vic’s wheelchair has been placed by the corner and Vic’s sitting on Adri’s bed, which means eir in the perfect position to pat Adri on the head in approval.

“Yes, and I would also suggest we ask Iridesca and Aurum to move in. I feel like they would be safer with us, and it’s not like the university is far from here. And it would reassure Soren that they’re safe.” Vic says, running fingers through Adri’s hair. Chrisl’s lying in Adri’s lap and Adri is playing with their hair.

“I want to accompany Soren more when they go to the lab too. I think having me there will help prevent them from pulling a lot of the things that Soren told me about earlier. I also think coming up with a contract will help? So, we rent one of the backrooms but we trade things that Soren wouldn’t need anyway, and that help them in the long run.

“So, it’s settled than, we ask Fae and Castore in the morning, and then Chrisl goes to offer Aurum and Des rooms as well.” Vic says, before flopping back onto Adri’s bed. Xe pushes Vic a little, and Vic laughs as ey move over to eir own bed.

“I’ll go to my room now.” Chrisl says, closing the door behind them as Vic and Adri start getting into a pillow fight.

Really, they’re both at least a century old.

But no one is ever too old for a pillow fight.

\--

_Ten Years Later_

“Soren-magistae? Are you in?” Chrisl asks teasingly, peeking around the door frame.

Soren leaps off their chair to hug their old mentor, who laughs and hugs them back. Chrisl looks the same as they did long ago.

“I like what you’ve done with the place.” Chrisl says, admiringly. Soren snorts and smacks Chrisl on the arm. After all, Chrisl knew about the Crossroads Clinic since it’s conception and Adri, Vic and Chrisl all helped get it running in the first place. Vic had taught Soren the neat way of creating artificial space within a fixed boundary that they did for their shop.

“It’s not half as good as Lightnink.” Soren says modestly.

“Nope. It’s twice as good.” Chrisl grins, spinning around. The walls are covered in children’s artwork and various art pieces from different cultures and species. There’s a demonic-influenced piece across part of the doorway, right next to a Cloudian charm, and a finger-painting. The floors glow with wards, the same way Lightnink does. Adri and Vic never call their shop Lightnink but that’s what it apparently got called by the students who came often. Aurum and Des were very fond of that name, especially after they moved in.

“You’ve surpassed all my expectations, Soren-magistae.” Adri says, walking in behind Vic who just applauds.

Fae’s working at the front, helping anyone who comes in to get the relevant tests done. Castore’s in the next room over, processing said tests or sending them off to get tested. Crossroads, as the name suggests, is at the crossroads of the Diristerian, Cloudian and Haelendian realms, and it serves anyone who needs health related help.

The cost for said help, of course, is that you bring a piece of artwork with you. Any type counts. (Frankly, Soren would have accepted a crumpled piece of paper. Adri and Vic hadn’t asked for anymore, after all, even when Soren insisted on paying them.)

Soren got their Magistae in Immunology a year after they and their siblings moved into Lightnink. They had all been caught in the revolution another year later where Lightnink had been activated again as a safehouse, but Adri and Vic had made sure that starborn were included in the revolution.

Fae never did manage to decide what she wanted from university, and so ended up helping out at Soren’s clinic in its early days, and later took a bunch of different courses on wildly different topics for the fun of it. Castore ended up studying Writing Magic, and Vic was perhaps a little bit too happy to take her on as eir apprentice. Castore, guided by Vic, had written the wards for Crossroads Clinic, and taking after her oldest sibling, had included Haelendian and Diristerian elements.

Iridesca, or Des, went down to a human university to study Law and Politics in the human sense. Her schooling was funded by a mysterious scholarship that none of the ‘grandparents’ would admit to having been set up. Des would go on to represent other beings which weren’t always protected by Cloudian law and become famous (or is that infamous?) for being better at finding loopholes and other interpretations of the law than most faerie lawyers.

Aurum, for her part, ended up a scientist, and helps Castore with the running of tests while studying for her own Magistae in Magical Composition. She was apprenticed under Vic’s Namer, a pleasant but sardonic faerie with a humour that clicked with Aurum’s.

(It was the discovery of Naming in the faerie sense which had prompted Aurum to go into Magical Composition. Aurum had found out that Adri and Chrisl had Named each other, and then proceeded to figure out the differences between Naming and marriage in the human sense. Aurum would also, at some point in the future, argue in favour of her younger sister Fae being allowed to be Named by a demon named Nyx. That caused an uproar in the Cloudian community when they went ahead with it but, hey, worth it. Fae was happy, and Nyx was a wonderful addition to the family. Adri, Vic and Chrisl sat down with both of them to talk to them for hours before the Naming, and to this day, neither Nyx nor Fae will say exactly what the talk was about.)

Finally, Soren, for their own part, became a healer. Chrisl, when asked if they were upset that their apprentice was far better known than they were, always laughed at the question and said that seeing Soren succeed was a far better reward than their own success. Chrisl would help Soren in many things, even after Soren got their Magistae, because as Chrisl put it, ‘you’re my grandchild, Soren, just let your old grandparent help you with this little thing’. It was never a little thing, but somehow, they got by. Soren did field healing with Chrisl during the revolution, and found it fascinating to see how Chrisl lit up. Chrisl, as it turned out, had been a healer in the Floodlight revolution, and had first learnt field healing on the ground, treating revolutionaries.

If you asked Adri, Vic or Chrisl if they had any regrets taking in Soren and their siblings, all three would give you varying levels of scorn and say that adopting five grandchildren had been the best decision they ever made.


End file.
